Hours after his mom was killed in a horrific automotive crash on December 10, 2020, Gus Atkinson sat in his childhood bed room beside his father, Ed.
For some time, there was silence. Then the 22-year-old Gus reached for a cricket ball.
He weighed the leather-based in his hand, checked out his father and mentioned: ‘I need to bowl for England, I need to take 5 wickets and I need to maintain the ball up and say: “Thanks, Mum.”’
The earlier night, Caroline Atkinson had been killed when the Uber she was travelling in was hit by a automotive travelling at 63mph on Fulham Palace Highway in west London – the place the velocity restrict was simply 30mph.
Youssef Berouain climbed out of his wrecked £70,000 Audi Q7 and was arrested by police, who later reported that he stank of hashish. The then-27-year-old Berouain refused to offer a pattern, which means we’ll by no means know what concoction of medication and drink may need prompted him to drive with such deadly abandon.
What we do know is that two weeks earlier than Christmas, that yr, a 55-year-old mom of three misplaced her life due to what Mr Justice Hehir would go on to explain as Berouain’s ‘felony stupidity and selfishness’.
A younger Gus Atkinson stands beside his beloved mom Caroline – who was killed by a rushing former Eastenders actor whereas she took an Uber in 2020
It was Caroline Atkinson who had fostered her eldest son’s dream of enjoying skilled cricket. It was she who had pushed him each Wednesday night from Bradfield, his Berkshire boarding faculty synonymous with sport, to cricket observe in Guildford. Within the phrases of 1 household good friend talking completely to the Mail this month: ‘Caroline was the pressure of nature behind her son’s sporting success.’
After which, this summer time, three and a half years after Caroline’s premature passing, Gus Atkinson achieved the dream he and his beloved mom had labored so onerous to realize.
It was July 10 and a muggy day at Lord’s cricket floor in north London. Earlier than play, Atkinson had been offered with a blue England Check cap marking his debut look – an emblem of getting reached the head of the skilled sport.
As vice-captain Ollie Pope – Atkinson’s teammate and good friend of 17 years – handed it over, he echoed the ideas of many and mentioned, with a lump in his throat: ‘Your mum can be so proud.’
4 hours later, Gus was strolling off the sector to a standing ovation from the 31,000 spectators packed into the House of Cricket, having taken seven wickets within the first innings.
He completed the match with 12 wickets and the very best bowling figures by an England Check debutant for 134 years.
A brand new star of the game had been born.
On July 26 this yr, the day killer Youssef Berouain was sentenced to eight and a half years in jail, Gus Atkinson made his second Check look for England
Two weeks later, on July 26, Berouain was lastly sentenced to eight and a half years in jail for inflicting Caroline’s loss of life. The Atkinson household’s four-year battle for justice was over. It was the identical day Gus walked out to make his second Check look for England.
However why did it take so lengthy to carry the person who was answerable for Caroline’s loss of life to account? The story begins on that wet evening in December 2020.
Caroline had gone out for Christmas drinks together with her good friend, Penelope Seguss. The pair had been wanting ahead to letting their hair down with buddies after months of Covid lockdowns.
They left a property on Niton Road in Fulham – the place properties promote for as a lot as £3million – simply after 10.20pm and stood for a short time on the pavement whereas ready for an Uber to take them residence to Wandsworth.
A couple of minutes later, Uber driver Shafiqullah Saied arrived in his Toyota Prius and the ladies jumped within the again seats, pulling the belts throughout their laps.
Mr Saied turned the automotive round and crawled as much as the junction that connects Niton Road with Fulham Palace Highway, the place the velocity restrict rises from 20mph to 30mph.
Saied seemed each methods earlier than edging out to get a greater view of the right-hand flip. He was planning to drive to Putney Bridge; the visitors can be OK at the moment of evening and the journey shouldn’t have taken greater than quarter-hour. The clock on the dashboard flickered to 10:36pm.
Court docket stories present Mr Saied waited an unusually very long time on the junction. Maybe he didn’t need to take any dangers within the moist climate. Lastly, a automotive coming from the best slowed and flashed its lights, giving him area to cross the carriageway and be part of the eastbound visitors.
He lifted his foot off the brake and gently pulled the steering wheel all the way down to the best. Mr Saied, Ms Seguss and Caroline had simply sufficient time to see an Audi Q7 travelling at velocity in direction of them from the left. Its driver swerved, however it was too late. The automobiles collided in an explosion of noise, steel howling in opposition to steel, shrapnel cartwheeling throughout the tarmac.
The Audi – a two and a half tonne SUV – had hit the Prius on the rear passenger aspect. Mr Saied was unharmed, however the scene at the back of his automotive was like one thing from a warzone.
Berouain fled to the US after his deadly actions, and was extradited again to the UK final yr. He pleaded responsible to inflicting loss of life and severe harm by harmful driving
Ms Seguss, coated in glass from the rear window, couldn’t transfer. She would later discover that she’d shattered her pelvis and hip, damaged her femur and had additionally suffered injury to inner organs. She would spend three weeks in hospital, present process quite a few surgical procedures earlier than spending an additional six weeks in a rehabilitation clinic.
Even now, nearly 4 years on, she has in depth bodily and psychological scars. She stays in near-constant ache. ‘Each time I stroll,’ she advised the courtroom earlier this yr, ‘I’m reminded of that evening.’
An excellent worse destiny befell Caroline.
Within the fast aftermath of the crash, adrenaline coursing by way of her veins, Caroline had remained acutely aware lengthy sufficient to listen to the sound of an ambulance siren roaring in direction of her. However shortly after the emergency companies arrived, she handed out. She was rushed to hospital however died two hours later, having suffered a ruptured aorta and lacerated liver.
On the time of her loss of life, Gus was 22; his older sister, Izzie, was 24 and their youngest sibling, Barnaby, had simply left faculty aged 18.
The deadly crash was the results of reprehensibly irresponsible driving on the behalf of the person behind the wheel of the flash Audi: jobbing actor Youssef Berouain.
He was arrested on the scene. Based on courtroom paperwork, one police officer ‘noticed a robust scent of hashish coming from Berouain’s individual’, whereas one other described his behaviour as ‘erratic’.
He was duly hauled off to Hammersmith Police Station and at 4.30am – greater than 4 hours after Caroline had died – was requested to offer blood and urine samples. Berouain contemptuously refused earlier than insisting to officers that he had been driving at between 20 and 30mph – a declare he would proceed to make years later, regardless of an investigation subsequently proving he was travelling at a fairly unbelievable 63mph. He was launched on bail that evening.
A month later, on January 28, 2021, Berouain fled the nation, departing from Heathrow Airport to Dubai earlier than making it to the US later that yr. Astonishingly, his absconding wasn’t found by police a full seven months later when an officer turned as much as his UK tackle to serve him cost papers for failing to offer a pattern the evening of his arrest.
UK authorities contacted their US counterparts requesting Berouain be extradited. In July 2023, American legislation enforcement tracked him all the way down to an tackle in Los Angeles, utilizing particulars supplied to the state of California on a driver’s licence software.
When officers arrived on the tackle, Berouain was nowhere to be seen. The owner revealed he hadn’t paid lease for a yr. Nevertheless, they did have a cell phone quantity which they had been all too pleased at hand over.
Berouain, circled, performed teenage gang member Tayo in eight episodes of Eastenders
On July 20, Berouain was lastly apprehended – two and a half years after Caroline’s loss of life. He was extradited in September and pleaded responsible to inflicting loss of life and severe harm by harmful driving at Southwark Crown Court docket on June 14 this yr.
The police’s investigation discovered that Berouain, whose most notable function was enjoying a gangland thug in EastEnders, was greater than 300 toes away when Mr Saied made his ill-fated end up of Niton Road. If Berouain had been travelling on the velocity restrict, as he had falsely claimed, Mr Saied would have had an ample 8.7 seconds to finish his flip. Because it was, he had lower than half that point.
Berouain started to brake when he was 70 yards from the Prius. However at 63mph, the Audi’s stopping distance was 75 yards. The writing was already on the wall – Berouain slammed into the again of the Prius whereas nonetheless travelling at 47mph.
CCTV footage confirmed that within the moments earlier than the crash, Berouain had been accelerating shortly, even utilizing a bus lane to undertake different automobiles.
In his sentencing remarks, Mr Justice Hehir described Caroline Atkinson as ‘a formidable lady, fiercely dedicated to her kids and who stood up for what was proper’.
Now 31, Berouain – who has a baby within the US – will serve no less than half of his sentence earlier than he’s eligible for launch. The Mail contacted his appearing representatives, BWH Company, and requested whether or not it was nonetheless related to the disgraced bit-part performer. It refused to remark.
You will need to keep in mind that behind this appalling tragedy is a narrative of outstanding resilience.
Gus Atkinson suffered the lack of his greatest supporter and the lady who liked and cared for him like nobody else. Such a loss would have introduced many a fledgling profession to a paralysing and untimely end. However for Atkinson, strikingly, it has been the hearth that has propelled him from rising younger professional to real world-beater.
‘My mum pushed me ahead nearly behind my again,’ Gus mentioned just lately. ‘She’d get in contact with Surrey [his county team] and made positive I used to be nonetheless within the loop when maybe I may need been falling behind the others.
‘As soon as she handed away my profession might have gone one or two methods and I wished to take it within the route she would have wished. And that I wished as nicely.’
On the night his mum died, Gus Atkinson advised his father: ‘I need to bowl for England, I need to take 5 wickets and I need to maintain the ball up and say: “Thanks, Mum”‘
Even Gus’s father, Ed, who cut up from Caroline in 2010 and left the household to go and dwell within the UAE, admitted earlier this yr that Gus’s success was ‘the fulfilment of plenty of sacrifices Caroline made’.
She would have been immeasurably happy with her son, however she isn’t the one one. For Atkinson’s dauntless spirit – each on and off the sector of play – has stuffed cricket-lovers throughout the nation with satisfaction. Notably, he scored a near-perfect maiden Check century on the finish of final month, cementing his standing as a possible all-rounder within the mould of different England favorites Ian Botham and Freddie Flintoff.
How far Atkinson now goes within the sport is anybody’s guess. As a teenager, he suffered a sequence of stress fractures in his again – an harm that may simply finish a quick bowler’s profession.
However what’s for sure is that each milestone Atkinson achieves, he’ll maintain a cricket ball in his hand, look as much as the sky and say quietly to himself: ‘Thanks, Mum.’
